We go looking for Dylan
in Swansea, Dickens
in London, the Bröntes
in Haworth, haunting
the tombs and homes of the Dead
Proved Great.
Ghouls, stalkers,
paparazzi of the literati,
we can almost picture tiny Jane
herself, cloaked, hand struck
out to fend our cameras off,
as she dives into her coach and six
because she doesn’t want her phiz
in The Sun, page three,
much less her knickers
splayed for all the world to see,
though as for sex, well,
Foucault already
stripped her right
down to the skivvies.
No wonder she hides under
the floor of Winchester Cathedral,
though we try to chivvy up the slate
and flash our bulbs beneath
that etched black door
to ogle the corpse that wrote
the corpus, the skull
that held the skill.

William Greenway
from his book Everywhere at Once
University of Akron Press, 2008
Used with permission of the poet